Coach Carpenter announces retirement

JUNCTION CITY — Junction City’s head football coach David Carpenter announced his retirement, effective at the end of the school year, on Thursday.

Carpenter’s retirement was announced in a news release from Junction City statistician Wayne Pumphrey.

Carpenter is retiring after 37 years of coaching high school football, with 29 of those years spent as head coach.

Carpenter will remain the Director of Athletics at Class 3A Junction City and will continue to oversee both the Dragon and Lady Dragon Track and Field programs and the Dragon Weightlifting program, which he has led to a combined 16 state championships, according to a news release.

“Coach Carpenter is retiring from being the head football coach effective at the end of the school year,” said Junction City School District superintendent Robby Lowe said. “He’ll carry through and take of the offseason and all of his other duties.”

Attempts to reach Carpenter on Thursday for comment were unsuccessful.

While at the helm of the Dragon Football program, Carpenter established Junction City as a state powerhouse in his 25 years on the sideline and finishes his career as the 10th winningest coach in Arkansas high school football history.

Carpenter tallied a career record of 242 wins, 93 losses and one tie which included his first head coaching stop at Corning in 1986 and followed with a three-year stay at Clarendon from 1987-1989 before totaling 226 victories in two separate stints at Junction City: 1990-1993 and 1996-2016.

With just one playoff win in school history before his arrival in the border town, Carpenter consistently fielded Dragon teams built for deep playoff runs. Of his 226 wins at Junction City, 55 victories came in the playoffs as Carpenter claimed Class 2A State Championships in 2003, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

From 1998-2016, Carpenter averaged 11 wins a season and never finished a year with fewer than seven victories, while making 19 trips to the Class 2A State Playoffs and a dozen appearances in the Class 2A State Semifinals, winning the aforementioned six state titles and finishing as Class 2A Runner-Up in 2006. He recorded 13 seasons with ten or more wins and six seasons with at least 13 victories including four undefeated campaigns in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2014.

A six-time Class 2A Coach of the Year, Carpenter engineered one of the best decades in Arkansas High School Football history from 2000-2009 as he ranked second in Arkansas Online’s “Arkansas’ Best Coaches of the Decade,” winning 10 or more games in eight of those years and claiming three state titles in four appearances.

He coached over 100 All-Conference selections and over 50 All-State honorees, with more than 15 players going on to play college football.